A replay of the nation’s only file-sharing case to go to trial ended the same as the first, with a Minnesota woman found to have violated music copyrights and ordered to pay hefty damages to the recording industry.

Thomas-Rasset’s second trial actually turned out worse for her. When a different federal jury heard her case in 2007, it hit Thomas-Rasset with a $222,000 judgment.

The new trial was ordered after the judge in the case decided he had erred in giving jury instructions.

Thomas-Rasset sat glumly with her chin in hand as she heard the jury’s finding of willful infringement, which increased the potential penalty. She raised her eyebrows in surprise when the jury’s penalty of $80,000 per song was read.

Outside the courtroom, she was resigned.

“There’s no way they’re ever going to get that,” said Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four from the central Minnesota city of Brainerd. “I’m a mom, limited means, so I’m not going to worry about it now.”

Her attorney, Kiwi Camara, said he was surprised by the size of the judgment. He said it suggested that jurors didn’t believe Thomas-Rasset’s denials of illegal file sharing, and that they were angry with her.

Camara said he and his client hadn’t decided whether to appeal or pursue the Recording Industry Association of America’s settlement overtures.

Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, said the industry remains willing to settle, but she refused to put a figure on it.

In closing arguments earlier Thursday in Minneapolis, attorneys for both sides disputed what the evidence showed.

An attorney for the recording industry, Tim Reynolds, said the “greater weight of the evidence” showed that Thomas-Rasset was responsible for the illegal file sharing that took place on her computer. He urged jurors to hold her accountable.

Defense attorney Joe Sibley said the music companies failed to prove allegations that Thomas-Rasset gave away songs by recording artists such as Gloria Estefan, Sheryl Crow, Green Day, Journey and others.

Sibley urged jurors not to ruin Thomas-Rasset’s life with a debt she could never pay. Under federal law, the jury could have awarded up to $150,000 per song.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, who heard the first lawsuit in 2007, ordered up a new trial after deciding he had erred in instructions to jurors.

For the retrial, Davis instructed the jurors that in order to find Thomas-Rasset infringed any copyrights, they had to determine that someone actually downloaded the songs. He said distribution needed to occur, though he didn’t explicitly define distribution. Before, Davis said simply making the songs available on the Kazaa file-sharing network was enough.

This case was the only one of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits to make it all the way to trial. The vast majority of people targeted by the music industry had settled for about $3,500 each. The recording industry has said it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders.

In testimony this week, Thomas-Rasset denied she shared any songs. On Wednesday, the self-described “huge music fan” raised the possibility for the first time in the long-running case that her children or ex-husband might have done it. The defense did not provide any evidence, though, that any of them had shared the files.

The recording companies accused Thomas-Rasset of offering 1,700 songs on Kazaa as of February 2005, before the company became a legal music subscription service. For simplicity’s sake the music industry tried to prove 24 infringements.

Reynolds argued Thursday that the evidence clearly pointed to Thomas-Rasset as the person who made the songs available on Kazaa under the screen name “tereastarr.”

Reynolds said the copyright security company, MediaSentry, traced the files offered by “tereastarr” on Kazaa to Thomas-Rasset’s Internet Protocol address — the online equivalent of a street address — and to her modem.

He said MediaSentry downloaded a sample of them from the shared directory on her computer. That’s an important point, given Davis’ new instructions to jurors.

The plaintiffs weren’t able to prove that anyone but MediaSentry downloaded songs off her computer because Kazaa kept no such records. But Reynolds told the jury it’s only logical that users had downloaded songs offered through her computer because that’s what Kazaa was there for.

Sibley portrayed the defendant as one of the few people brave enough to stand up to the recording industry.

Steve Marks, executive vice president and general counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America, estimated earlier this week that only a few hundred of the lawsuits remain unresolved. Fewer than 10 defendants were actively fighting them.

The recording industry has blamed online piracy for declines in music sales, although other factors include the rise of legal music sales online, which emphasize buying individual tracks rather than full albums.

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